The current user experience design trends can be characterized as an art form, and less of a science. Experience design depends on individual designer’s judgement than on any scientifically provable application or knowledge. As a career, User Experience Design is best practiced by individuals who are truly passionate about the field, rather than just academically equipped or coming in from a software development or engineering background.

It might seem a little far-fetched to someone who is not aware, but user experience design can save lives, and protect nations in the domain of Military and Defense. There are a lot of things that are developed in secrecy and not for the consumption and usage of a common person. For example “HUDs” or Heads-up-Display in fighter aircraft, and on-ground systems that monitor and classify drones in enemy territories and perform reconnaissance missions. Specifically with systems that identify, classify and track enemy threats in the air. Such systems collect information and forward the data to-deployed forces for rapid target coordination, enhanced situational awareness and increased mission execution.

Starting with requirement analysis, functional specification, prototyping and implementation. General guidelines like the system must be “Easy to use” can be quite vague for many designers without the absence of any specific standard or advisory body. Until quite recently there was very little serious attempt of using creativity to boost a country’s defense capabilities. Strangely enough not all proposed or standardized guidelines can be applied in designing any particular user interface, for some projects, a particular set of guidelines will be relevant, and others not. Guidelines i believe cannot take the place of the judgement of a subject matter expert of a specific field. Only a specialist knows how to adapt generally understood guidelines to the specific needs of a project and the culture of a target audience.

In terms of Military Projects, it is quite difficult to follow the standard practices of evaluating a user-experience design such as testing with large number of people, since the scope and functionality of the classified project would be revealed, and the nation’s security would be in jeopardy. Thus, the feasibility of testing a proposed prototype becomes non-existent, and the skill of a designer becomes even more important. The key to a good user-interface design in such a case is consistency, this is something all design specialists agree upon. Anyone involved in a User Interface Design Guidelines must acknowledge the significant contribution of everyday gadgets such as the iPhone and iPads that provide us with an examples of devices that do a lot of complicated things with much ease, just because the interface is easy and simple does not mean that effort was not put in designing it. In fact it’s quite that the opposite, a lot of effort was placed to make it easy to use. A lot of thought was placed in reductive thinking and simplifying complex ideas.

The collective judgment of a group of people is not always more feasible than the ideas of a specialized individual. It is important to realize that collective judgment, even though carries a lot of momentum, it does not carry the same weight as a specialist in terms of ‘attention to detail’ specifically in terms of the intricacies and nuances of a particular field that only a ‘Subject Matter Expert’ could possess. Ultimately a user-interface should be simple to use, and get the job done in the most efficient manner, without creating confusion in the mind of the end user. Generalists can offer suggestions, but they can be un-aware of the the consequences of what they have suggested. An icon could look good on a desktop version, but the same icon scaled down on a mobile or a tab could look, very confusing or totally unrecognizable. Most of the user interface design ideas that are applied in the Military are not specific to that domain, but are derived from everyday devices. All in all User Interface Design is a highly opinionated field and giants like HTC, Sony, Samsung, and LG each have their own differing examples of what they consider as the best UI overlaid on top of a generally agreed upon mobile operating system.

Another parallel example i can give from a different industry is that various watch manufacturers have differing opinions on what a good watch should look like, and even car manufactures compete yearly on creating the most beautiful and functional car. It cannot be proven by science, which car or watch is more beautiful, it is a matter of taste and style. Design must proven by a demonstrable prototype. A certain belief that that a User Interface Design is not effective, must be proven with a better more refined example, simply dis-agreeing doesn’t lead to any progress.